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Top 6 chatbot marketing strategies that every marketer should implement

Chatbots are the hottest thing in the domain of marketing and technology, giving us a glimpse into the exciting future of customer engagement by businesses and entrepreneurs.

Chatbots are replete with just about everything that makes them a suitable channel for marketing, customer interaction, sales, and distribution. It goes one step further and encourages people to engage in a friendly conversation that actually yields results.

Now, it’s easy to get carried away by the new developments, breakthroughs, and announcements when it comes to chatbots. Therefore, it is important for marketers to use their discretion in thinking about fitting chatbots in their marketing strategies.

As is the case with all technological nuances, you may want to ensure that implementing chatbots will indeed add value to your current or future customers. To be fair, it will take a while before most marketers discover the latent potential of chatbots in their scheme of (marketing) knowledge.

Here are six strategies marketers would do well to consider.

Identify whether your business needs a chatbot

Just because chatbots are all over the news doesn’t mean that they are a must-have for your business too. For instance, incorporating chatbots in the following domains always makes sense

Personal Assistants

The great thing about chatbots these days is their potential ability to gauge the likes and dislikes of people through new technologies. A chatbot could come in handy when your customers are unsure about the finer details of your products/services.

By getting into a chat with consumers, chatbots can decipher and identify their needs better and recommend products accordingly based on their choice.

Customer service

Chatbots are a seamless fit when it comes to customer service. This is because they can initiate conversations with your audience and attempt to identify and solve their problems by asking basic questions.

Moreover, it means that chatbots would be able to provide 24/7 customer service for your business. Just in case they cannot address a question, they can always alert a human representative who can then make a timely intervention.

Customer engagement

Chatbots can drastically augment the process of automating follow-ups on leads. This would save a lot of time and effort for marketers who simply don’t have the time to undertake follow-up efforts with all their customers.

Automating such processes would usher in transformational changes in the parlance of customer interaction because chatbots can be taught to engage with people on a highly personal level by using casual language.

Think the process through

You may want to spend time envisioning the entire spectrum of chatbot interaction which you would like your audience to undertake. Reflect on how it will start, follow up, and conclude.

Since there are many bots that over-promise and under-deliver, you cannot afford to take that chance. Know that leaving people with no or half-baked answers would be a cardinal sin that will let your marketing efforts down.

Try and test

It is a good idea to do as many experiments as you can with your chatbot before launching. The interesting feature about bots is that they let you tinker and alter with its style and formatting and make all the necessary adjustments before getting launched.

You can also share it within your teams or even clients and get their insightful feedback before officially launching it.

Use ad clicks to begin a chat

How about making use of ad clicks to begin a talk with your chatbot, as opposed to pushing them off to the increasingly predictable landing page?

If you aim to attract new users or are looking to get your customers back, ensure that you run A/B tests and assess their operational functionality.

Keep abreast of all the developments

You don’t want to neglect to keep yourself up to date with all the recent happenings in the messaging platforms you use or intend to use, be it Kik, Telegram, WeChat, Line, Slack, Skype, etc.

Since the industry is still at a nascent stage, new developments are occurring on a frequent basis. Something new and important will come up that you should know about, which includes downtimes and bugs.

Prepare a professional platform

As you develop your bot, opt for a professional and sleek online solution that is customized to your specific requirements. If you happen to outsource your marketing services, try to get a DIY bot creator and do not settle for deceptive, feel-good solutions that won’t go the distance. It helps to get your most tech-savvy members to create the chatbot using a solid platform.

These six marketing strategies should get you up and running with mapping your long-term chatbot success by understanding your objectives better and making proactive tactical changes at every stage. Since marketing can make or break your chatbot’s success, be sure to put in plenty of thought and planning into chalking out suitable strategies that make bots work for you, and not against you.

This post is part of our contributor series. It is written and published independently of TNW.